


Tread Softly

by hauntedjaeger (saellys), saellys



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Childbirth, F/M, Fenhawkebela if you squint, Hawke Switches Class, POV Alternating, Parenthood, Piracy, Porn With Plot, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Pregnancy, Recovery, Rescue, Seheron (Dragon Age), The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2019-10-29 05:09:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17801615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger, https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/saellys
Summary: “The Fade didn’t change you.”“Yes it did,” Hawke says, and Fenris peers at her. She doesn’t have the words. Shewantsnow, in a way she never did before. Towering want, beyond her own safety and the safety of those she loves. She wants something she has not yet glimpsed.





	1. In Dreams

Somewhere in the shadow of the Black City, Hawke sits with her back against a spire of chitin, quietly dying.

Vines like green eels coil across her legs. She long since ceased tearing them away when they advance. It’s strange, like everything else here, but despite the fact that she hasn’t moved in--days? weeks?--she feels buoyant, as if at any moment the vines will slide away, unable to contain her rising form.

A strange freedom, giving up.

Nothing dies in this place. She will become something else, the way her memories have become dreams, and her dreams have become visitors. Perhaps when all that remains of her is memories, she will learn the trick of slipping into someone else’s dreams. How she wishes she could see him one more time.

“Hawke.” She does not turn her head. Even her wishes become dreams here, borne on an ill wind until they snag and twist and clot into something nearly real.

Her memories form the visitors, so his voice is perfect. Ever since she noticed the color of his eyes wasn’t quite right, she hasn’t looked again.

At the edge of her vision, someone waves a dismissive hand. The vines withdraw from her with dreadful rending sounds, but she does not float away. “I’m not sure we should move her.” A different voice, familiar as her own.

“Would we even be able to?”

“We’re tangible to her, but it would be best if we didn’t try to carry her.” Who--  

Someone else moves closer, crouches beside her. “Sister.” A delicate hand smoothes the hair out of her face. “Can you walk?”

Her eyes focus. In all this time she has not dreamt of Bethany. Bethany was safe and Hawke was at peace with that. Her visitors only wore masks to match her regret.

Behind Bethany stand an elf and a half-elf. The former has been the center of her thoughts these long days, but the latter holds her attention now, because at first she can't recall his name, and her mind is slow to realize what that means. 

“You’re here,” she says to Bethany. Her voice is weak from disuse and her lips do not quite remember how to smile. She turns her face toward Fenris, but that is not enough. With effort, she pushes herself up and lists toward him. 

He catches her, and whispers in her ear, “I’m here.”

She has heard the words in his voice a hundred times already. The shades only say what she wants to hear. Still she clutches him.

Beside them the Dreamer, Feynriel, says, “We should be quick.”

Hawke doesn’t move until some nightmare creature cries out in the distance. As her grip on him loosens, Fenris shifts to her side, one arm about her waist. It would look like a lover's casual embrace, were it not for the way she leans on him.

She is not quick. Her lungs burn after moments and for all that she still feels weightless, each step is like freeing her feet from tar. She was halfway to becoming part of the Raw Fade, and the Raw Fade does not wish to see her go. A noxious haze surrounds them--this much must be Feynriel’s doing, for protection, as it keeps to either side but does not obscure the path ahead.

For a while she walks with her eyes closed, willing her legs to work, and when she looks again she finds the Dreamer holding a strand of something coarse and brown. It stretches to the ground before them, and as they walk he ravels it into a ball.  

“Is that... twine?”

“Yes,” says Feynriel, amusement in his voice. “I’ll have to return it when we wake.”

“Oh,” she says, and lets the hope leave her body in the same breath. “This is a dream.”

“No,” says the shade of Fenris. He turns her toward him, his grip firm on her arms.

Bethany moves forward, her hand at Hawke’s back. “We’re here with you.”

“It is a dream,” says Feynriel, “but not yours.”

“Not helping,” Bethany tells him.

Hawke lets a thin, bitter laugh escape her. No indeed. If it was her dream, the others wouldn't be here, only Fenris, and they would be someplace that doesn't look like a greenhouse left untended for an age.

“It’s as real as it was when you did this for me, Hawke.” She meets Feynriel’s earnest gaze, and then she lets her eyes close. Nothing she does now will matter.

The Fade doesn’t have to fight to keep her.

“Hawke.” Fenris’s voice cuts through her fatigue.

“Let me be.”

" _Fine_. But you have to do one thing for me.” Now comes the bargain; it was only a matter of time. His hands tilt her face toward his. She opens her eyes, and his--a green far removed from the rotten hue of this place--implore her. “At the end of this path is an Eluvian, and when you step through it you’ll be free. I’m waiting for you, Hawke. _Please_.”

His words make no sense, but it doesn’t matter, so she nods. Fenris releases her, and Hawke turns away from him and Bethany. Untethered from their hands she drifts up the path where the twine leads, and does not hear them follow. She does not look back to see whether the shades have shed their masks.

Past the next bend there is indeed a mirror, tall and astonishingly bright in the Fade’s gloaming. She squints into it and thinks she sees a small dim room, plank walls, three hammocks and the shapes of sleepers within them like a spider’s shrouded meal, a mabari on the floor, and on either side, mirages of Merrill and Isabela, reaching for her.

The portal tugs at her as if she is rising from the bath, and when Hawke steps out of Merrill’s mirror and onto the deck, she is suddenly heavy again. She stumbles, lands on her knees. Merrill and Isabela rush to support her but Hawke shrugs their hands away and wills herself forward the last two meters. She grips the edge of Fenris’s hammock and falls into it.

Their breastplates thunk together. Fenris grunts, and the hammock sways, and Hawke is done now, her body turned to lead even as the dreamers wake. Fenris’s arms enclose her, tighter than vines, and he is kissing her brow, her cheeks, her mouth, and Hawke tastes tears but she doesn’t know whose, and now, free from dreams at last, she rests.


	2. The Waking Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lifetime ago, in Kirkwall, he would watch her open letter after letter. She would say that she had everything she wanted: a lover, a home, a comfortable sum of money, and good wine. Because of that, she could serve at the whim of strangers, even ones she loathed. All she wanted, truly, was to make the city a better place for everyone.
> 
> At the time, it did not occur to either of them to want more.
> 
> Hawke looks to him again. “Any ideas?”
> 
> “Living in a log house with a trio of hunting dogs and two black-haired children,” he says at once.

Technically, Hawke should have died after a week.

“She’s malnourished and severely dehydrated, which isn’t surprising,” Bethany says. “The Raw Fade doesn’t have the same laws, but a human body can only hold itself together for so long. It’s good that you wasted no time. The fact that she made it a month suggests there was intent.”

“To what end?” Fenris demands. How terribly light Hawke felt, even in her plate, when she toppled into his hammock. As if she’d been hollowed out.

Bethany’s countenance is grave. “Relentless torment and exhaustion? What end indeed.” She sees the look on Fenris’s face and hurries to say, “It didn’t work. She isn’t changed.”

Relief washes over him. “I am grateful for your help,” Fenris says.

Bethany gives him a very Hawke look. A _could I have done less?_ look. “I’ll send the cook with some broth later. She’s still awake, if you’d like to see her.”

Just now it is the one and only thing he’d like. Fenris steps into the little white-walled cabin and is rewarded with a smile, weak but genuine. Underneath her hanging pallet, her mabari thumps his stub tail. Hawke reaches for Fenris, and he takes the stool beside her.

“I have to know one thing,” she says.

“Anything.” Her fingers are cold when he takes them between his palms.

“If I had died in there, would you ever have been able to forgive me?”

Direct as ever. “No,” he says without hesitation.

He hoped to make her laugh, but instead she looks away. “It’s good to acknowledge these things.” A breath later she adds, “I’m sorry.”

Fenris studies her profile. He dreamed of her face every night since she left to answer Varric’s letter. As they neared the Waking Sea the dreams turned ghastly--once her features transfigured into the letter Varric sent him, and Fenris woke gasping, eyes shut tight to conjure her eyes, her birthmark, her lips, over and over until he was certain he remembered what they looked like.

“You didn’t die,” he says, “so what are you apologizing for?”

“For the trouble. Did you _walk_ to Minrathous?”

“I rode the Highway, and by the time I arrived at the harbor Isabela and the others were waiting for me.”

“Finding Feynriel of all people--”

“It wasn’t difficult. He’s made a name for himself.”

Her hand tightens in his and at last she turns her face toward him. “Stop that.”

“What?”

“Acting like you didn’t perform a miracle.” She swallows. “You saw where I was. It’s not a place people come back from.”

Fenris cannot disagree, so he takes this opportunity to press her hand against his face. She shapes her palm to his cheek, and her eyes brim with adoration.

She had good reasons to go alone. She was right to fear for him in particular; even in Nevarra there was talk of red lyrium. She had the wisdom to presume that with Fade rifts all over the south, she would end up inside one sooner or later. And if he had been there with her, who else would have attempted a rescue?

“Knock knock,” Isabela calls instead of actually knocking. She enters without waiting, a bowl of broth  in hand. “I hate to interrupt--”

“You do not,” Hawke says without malice.

“That’s true.” Isabela sets the soup down, then stands at Fenris’s side and examines Hawke’s face. “Hawke,” she says, slowly and clearly. “Do you know you’re awake right now?”

Hawke gazes in supplication at the ceiling. “Yes,” she sighs. “I’m awake, this is real, Fenris is real, you are infuriatingly real, Isabela.”

Still attempting some form of bedside manner, Isabela puts her hand on Hawke’s arm. “And you’re real.”

“I am awake,” Hawke says, voice tight. “You all brought me out of the Fade. I am not currently inhabiting a fantasy constructed by a desire demon.”

Isabela shoots Fenris a smile that is incongruous with this situation. “Hear that? A desire demon would stick both of us in Hawke’s fantasy.”

“We all knew,” Fenris says, and Hawke gives him a shove.

“Now that we’ve established this isn’t a dream, I’m afraid I have bad news, sweet thing. We have to stop at Kirkwall in three days’ time to drop off Merrill and her magic mirror.”

“Wake me up,” Hawke beseeches Fenris. He pinches her arm. “Damn.”

“We won’t stay long, and Bethany says you shouldn’t be out of bed that soon anyway. Just a warning--it would probably be wise to stay out of sight while we’re in the docks.” Isabela leans down to kiss Hawke’s cheek. “I’m glad you’re back. The world was getting pretty messed up without you in it.”

Hawke’s mouth twists. “Oh, yes,” she says, “and all’s well now.” Isabela only grins on her way out. Hawke picks up the bowl and sips directly from it.

Fenris turns Hawke’s free hand over in his and draws lazy circles on her palm. “Did you meet any desire demons?”

“No. Just despair.”

His fingers still. The light that came back into Hawke’s eyes at the sight of Isabela dims again. She sets the broth aside.

“That _place_. I couldn’t make anything stick. It was all undone as soon as I turned my back.” She could mean the Fade or Kirkwall, or perhaps the prison where she killed Corypheus. “Like climbing a mountain of sand. In the end, I gave up.”

Even though he suspected when she sagged in his arms at Feynriel’s words, even though, when they found her, she had the detached gaze of a woman who had no reason to care about what happened next, the words strike him like a punch to the sternum.

He grips her hand tighter and asks, “And now?”

“Now I have another chance.”

“To do what?”

Anyone else would get a crooked smile and an answer that’s half a joke and half bravado. Not now, not when they’re alone. Her brows knit and she drops her gaze and thinks for a long time.

A lifetime ago, in Kirkwall, he would watch her open letter after letter. She would say that she had everything she wanted: a lover, a home, a comfortable sum of money, and good wine. Because of that, she could serve at the whim of strangers, even ones she loathed. All she wanted, truly, was to make the city a better place for everyone.

At the time, it did not occur to either of them to want more.

Hawke looks to him again. “Any ideas?”

“Living in a log house with a trio of hunting dogs and two black-haired children,” he says at once.

Her grin is warm and drowsy. “Do you think there’s any chance of it?”

Fenris wants to go back to the raw Fade and find the nearest despair demon and cut it to ribbons. “There is if we make it so.”

She touches his face again, and Fenris leans into it. “You should rest,” he murmurs to her palm.

“So come here,” she says, already half asleep.

He considers the narrowness of the pallet, the thin chains tethering it to the ceiling, the way it swings every time the ship rolls. The fragility of her condition, her wrapped ribs and yellowing bruises, weighed against the sweetness of her body against his after so long. He unbuckles his chestplate.

She makes room for him when he slips under the blanket. As he puts one arm beneath her head, her hand finds his chest. Paper crinkles at her touch. “What’s this?”

Before he can say anything she’s sliding the letter out from under his tunic. “Ah,” she breathes, recognizing Varric’s handwriting. “You kept it.”

Fenris lets out a breath. He can’t say why he did, now that they’re out of the Fade. He watches Hawke’s face as she unfolds the tattered paper and reads it, and wonders if he looked half so despondent the first (third, fifteenth, hundredth) time.

 _Fenris_ , it says, and that was enough to tell him this was bad beyond reckoning, that Varric didn’t even call him Broody. The letter could have ended there, and he would have known, but it didn’t.  

_It’s Hawke. I’m sorry._

Hawke sniffs. “Bit vague, that part.”

“Unsatisfying,” Fenris agrees, “and not very convincing.”

She reads the rest--the details Varric offered without embroidery that still managed to be more fantastical than anything from his novels--and then carefully folds the letter again, and places it under her pillow.

Her eyes water. “Varric’s rubbish at endings.”

Caution be damned. He pulls her to him roughly enough to jar the pallet, one arm around her waist and the other hooked at the back of her neck. Her lips are rough and dry against his; her hands clutch at his tunic. He is _hungry_.

He stops kissing her long enough to gasp, “When I thought… when I let myself think it--” The words won’t come, and he nearly growls in frustration. “I thought if I could just have another chance to do this, for once I wouldn’t take it for granted.” This last he speaks against the hollow of her throat.

“You never have,” Hawke says, and Fenris feels the words as much as hears them. Her hands travel up, into his hair, and she pulls his head back enough to look him in the eye. “We _never_ have.”

She’s right of course; every chance to touch her has been precious, cherished. Every time she has looked at him in a dim room it has been with wonder and gratitude. They have worked for that.

He kisses her again. He is still hungry for her, but the desperation has burned down for the moment. He can wait until they’re someplace where the bed won’t strike the wall and alert the entire ship. Isabela would never let them live that down.

Twined with her and rocked by the waves of the Waking Sea, Fenris listens to Hawke breathe long into the night.

\- - -

Hawke is still abed when they arrive at the docks of Kirkwall, but Merrill spends most of the morning in her cabin saying goodbye. Fenris looks on while Isabela instructs her crew in the packing of the slumbering Eluvian, and only when it is stowed in a massive crate do they bring it from her cabin to the deck. Merrill emerges sometime later, while Fenris is at the rail of the forecastle deck.

He probably shouldn’t be out in the open either--he is nearly as well known as Hawke, and far more noticeable. But from here he can see the flaming sword of her statue, as well as Hightown’s white walls above them. He looks for any remaining sign of scorched rubble, and finds none.

“Well,” says Merrill, pausing beside him. “I suppose this is goodbye again. Thank you for asking me to help.” Fenris doesn’t cover the blankness in his eyes in time. “Oh. It was Isabela’s idea. Right.”

“It was,” he admits. “But I’m not sure what we would have done without you, Merrill.”

“You would have been stranded in the Fade forever,” she says cheerfully. She has not changed.

Fenris extends his hand to her. “Thank you.” Merrill clasps his hand, eyes shining.

“Come visit the alienage!” she calls on her way down the gangplank behind four of Isabela’s crewmen, who carry the crate between them.

Not if he can avoid it.

“They’ll be an hour or so,” Isabela says, leaning back against the railing. “Just long enough for the Kirkwall stench to soak in.”

“Lye soap,” Fenris advises. “The whole crew could do with a scrub.”

“So could your woman, Messere Hygiene. I’ll make you a deal. You scrub my boys, and I’ll scrub Hawke.”

Isabela awaits either his disdain or his grudging smile, but instead Fenris grabs the rail to steady himself. She turns to see why.

“That’s not possible,” she breathes.

Staring up at them from the dock, with a sack and a crossbow over his shoulder, is Varric Tethras.

Fenris and Isabela move to the top of the plank, and Varric waits at the bottom.

“Permission to board, Admiral?” he calls, and Fenris looks to Isabela, denial on his face.

She does not look at him. “Granted--provisionally. Are you alone?”

Varric nods, and Isabela steps aside, tugging Fenris with her.

“I was afraid I’d missed you,” Varric huffs as he climbs the plank. “You found her? Is she all right?”

Now Isabela does look to Fenris, and Fenris folds his arms.

“I get it,” Varric says, “I do. I just want to know.”

Fenris expects the Inquisition would also like to know, but that becomes a moot point when Hawke cries out, “Varric!”

She climbs up from below decks, Bethany supporting her and the dog at her side, and Varric abandons his bag and runs to her, and Hawke drops to one knee, and the only thing stopping Fenris from being furious at the entire circumstance is the happiness on her face. “I was going to write you,” she says.

“Couldn’t wait that long, Hawke.” Varric hugs her fiercely.

“Awww,” Isabela says. Fenris turns his glare on her, and she clears her throat and yells, “Get back downstairs.”

“Make me,” Hawke fires back, but when Isabela and Fenris step forward she retreats to Bethany’s assistance once more. “We’re going, we’re going! Come on, Varric.”

The dwarf comes back for his things. “Oh, Rivaini.” He tosses her the bag, fast as a card trick, and Isabela catches it one-handed. “With my compliments.”

Isabela opens it and removes something with a rounded stock and carefully balanced limbs. “ _Hel_ lo,” she coos. “What am I going to call you?”

Fenris leaves her to her new crossbow, and follows Hawke below decks. He pauses at her door when Varric chuckles inside. For the next minute he hears no more than faint murmurs, until Bethany opens the door. “She says come in.”

Scowling, Fenris does.

“Vivienne took almost a month finding the spell components,” Varric says, “but of course by the time we got there, you were gone. It was Morrigan who noticed one of the Eluvians had been used.”

Fenris leans against the wall just inside the door and watches Hawke. She sits up on her pallet, color in her cheeks again from the exertion moments ago. Bethany brings her a cup of tea, and Hawke warms her hands on it.

“The Fade was _pissed_ ,” Varric goes on. He accepts tea with a smile for Bethany. “Morrigan managed to get the Eluvian working again and the Inquisitor told me to jump through while the others were fighting. At first I thought something had gone wrong--it was pitch black and I was suffocating in some kind of thick blanket. I thrashed around a little, in a dignified way.”

Bethany brings Fenris a cup. After she stands there patiently for a moment, he uncrosses his arms to take it.

“All of a sudden the lid flies off the crate I’m in, and there’s Daisy staring down at me. ‘Varric!’ she says, with that big smile. I felt bad running off when she was so glad to see me, but I think she understood. And you know the rest. Point is, they did try to come for you. They’re decent people,” Varric presses on, heavy-handed. “Mostly. A bit clumsy sometimes, but they’re the only ones really trying for some kind of order in this mess. And they need all the help they can get. It’s quiet now, but that won’t last long.” He raises a brow.

Hawke is silent. She needed no convincing to help before, so this was all…

For his benefit. Fenris hisses a curse.

“Proselytizing is boring,” Bethany says, in a fair impersonation of Isabela.

“Mmm,” Hawke says to her tea. “It’s good to see you again, Varric. And I’m not coming back to the Inquisition.”

Fenris takes a drink to keep from smiling, and the tea does nothing to stifle the triumphant thrill in his chest.

“Okay,” Varric says, astonishingly fast. “They don’t need to know I found you all.”

“Varric,” Hawke gasps, laying the melodrama on perhaps a bit thick. “You… would _lie_?” The dwarf raises his cup to her.

Tea splashes out of it as the ship lurches. “That was quick,” Bethany says.

“Looks like I’m stuck here a while,” Varric chuckles, and Fenris is already out the door.

He storms up to the quarterdeck and snaps, “Why are we leaving?”

Isabela fixes him with a look that, for once, is not at all playful. “Because my men came back early,” she says coolly, “and I ordered it so.”

Fenris abruptly becomes aware of the crew around them, who all continue to do their jobs while pretending not to listen.

He drops his shoulders. “Admiral,” he says, keeping his voice low with monumental effort, “may I speak with you privately?”

She tilts her head toward her cabin. Fenris goes. The little crossbow sits on her enormous oak desk, and when she shuts the door behind him he asks, “Are you so easily bought?”

Isabela holds his gaze in silence long enough for guilt to outweigh Fenris’s fury. He opens his mouth to apologize, but she speaks first. “Varric found us, and the Inquisition could, too. Worst case scenario, we drop him off in Wycome with Bethany when we’re sure the coast is clear. Best case, we hold him hostage to extract their promise that they’ll leave Hawke alone.”

Fenris blinks. “That’s…”

“Cunning? Yes.”

It’s forethought he doesn’t expect from her, but he doesn’t need to say that. “Varric told her he won’t give the Inquisition any information.”

“Then they’ll tie him to a chair and beat it out of him again,” she says, perching on the edge of the desk.

Fenris freezes. “What?”

“You didn’t know? You should ask him--he’ll probably say it’s kind of a funny story.”

The fury is returning, though its target is less clear now. “And he worked with them _willingly_?”

Isabela shrugs. “Times are very, very strange, Fenris.”

He rubs between his eyes where an ache has developed. Outside the windows, the Twins of Kirkwall glide past. “We’re behaving like fugitives,” he mutters.

“We’re buying Hawke time,” Isabela corrects gently, “until she’s able to move forward on her own terms.”

Fenris straightens and looks her in the eye. “Thank you, Isabela.” She sweeps her hat off into a deep bow, and Fenris leaves her cabin to return to Hawke’s.

Varric stands in his path, at the top of the ladder below decks. “You can blame me, Broody,” Varric says, “and you can hate me—it’s fine. But I need you to know, all I care about is that she’s all right.”

Fenris moves to step around him, but pauses long enough to set one hand on Varric’s shoulder. In the years since Kirkwall, he has had only Hawke at his back. It was easy to think it would only ever be them, and to narrow his world accordingly, but it’s clear now that despite time and distance, none of them have changed. Varric looks up at him, and Fenris nods his thanks.

Bethany has gone when he gets to Hawke’s cabin, and Hawke is lying down again, but her eyes open before he can quietly shut the door again. She reaches for him and he sets his hand at her cheek.

“Do you have any idea,” he says, “how many people on this ship love you?”

Hawke only smiles.

\- - -

The number grows between Kirkwall and Wycome. First it’s the cook and the cabin boy, who prepare fresh-caught fish for Hawke when she can tolerate solid food again. The ship’s surgeon defers to Bethany’s skills, but he does bring compresses for Hawke’s bruises, which leave her skin smelling of fruit.

The first day after Kirkwall, Hawke comes to the upper deck and Bethany permits her to walk the length of the ship three times. A seaman shows her where a broken spar went straight through his calf in a storm, and Hawke lifts her shirt to show him the scar from the Arishok’s sword. They hobble side by side from bow to stern. Isabela mutters something about stealing her men.

(That isn’t what she’s doing, and she does it as effortlessly as she took Varric’s letter from Fenris and made it hers to carry. When one is strong enough, one can’t help but lift the weight everyone else bears.) 

The second day after Kirkwall, the boatswain, Enfer, brings a decrepit barrel up from the orlop and lends Hawke a wicked assortment of throwing knives. She practices on the bow until she’s wheezing. 

That night they gather on the quarterdeck for cards and wine, and to bid farewell to Bethany and Varric. Fenris takes a little glass to Hawke, but she sleepily declines and promises to cover his losses in the morning. 

When, for the third consecutive round, Feynriel lays down the winning hand and asks if he did it right, Varric groans and calls for a break. He decants their second jug of wine and proposes a toast: “To Hawke. For bringing us all together again.” They drink. 

“Since we are all here,” Bethany says. “I’ve been meaning to ask. In your travels, have any of you come across our mutual friend?”

Varric maintains a tell-free facade. Fenris shakes his head.

Isabela says, “Why do you ask, sweetness?”

“Just need some advice,” Bethany replies guilelessly.

“Ooh, what about?”

“Yeah,” Varric says, “what could Blondie offer that we can’t, with our collective worldly wisdom?”

Bethany looks so uneasy that Fenris has to step in. “Demolition?”

“Yes!” Bethany says, and they all stare. “No, not like that. It’s the Circle in Wycome… I think they’re ready to liberate themselves. Who’s up for another round?” She drinks her entire glass of wine.

Fenris eyes her, but lets her keep her secrets.

The third day, they are only a few miles from Wycome when Hawke stops in the middle of an agility course made of rope coils. She shades her eyes and squints into the sun. “What’s that ship on the horizon?”

Isabela looks up, unbothered, from oiling her crossbow. “They’re flying the Imperium’s colors. We’ve been trailing them since the Wounded Coast.”

Hawke lowers her hand, and Fenris stands straight because oh, her eyes hold fire.

“Isabela,” Hawke says, voice deceptively light. “How fast is your ship?”

“My ship?” Isabela says. “ _My_ ship, sweet thing, is the gale.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter graciously betaed by Nobbie!


	3. Strange Places

Even with full sails and Isabela barking orders, it takes a day and night for  _ Siren’s Call II _ to close the distance with the slaver ship. Hawke spends the time resting, joking with Enfer and Alwyn the quartermaster, eating meals of tough salted beef soaked in lemon, and practicing with the short rapiers Isabela’s crew favors. 

Fenris goes too easy on her. When she complains of it he only says, “You’d rather overextend yourself now, and miss the fight?” 

He’s right of course, but as their prize grows closer her blood pounds higher. 

He asks her only once if she’s sure this is what she wants. It is dusk, and Isabela and her navigator are conferring on the bridge. If they drop anchor now the slavers can lengthen their lead overnight. If they pursue, the slavers could change course under cover of darkness. 

“I’m sure,” Hawke answers, and he smiles. 

“Your sister is right. The Fade didn’t change you.” 

“Yes it did,” she says, and he peers at her. She doesn’t have the words. She  _ wants _ now, in a way she never did before. Towering want, beyond her own safety and the safety of those she loves. She wants something she has not yet glimpsed. 

This ship is only a start. 

“I think a part of me died there. The reckless part.” 

Fenris considers this as he takes her hand. “Some might describe pursuing an Imperium slaver ship as reckless.” 

He makes this far too easy. “Trust me,” says Hawke with a grin, “we’re going to wreck them.” He shuts his eyes and lets out a sigh. “Do you regret coming to get me yet?” 

His expression grows serious again. “Never,” he declares, his hand tightening around hers. 

Hawke dozes with her back to the foremast and her head on Fenris’s shoulder as they keep moving through the night, lanterns doused. 

At dawn they find their diligence rewarded. The slaver ship is dead ahead and closer than ever. Close enough that even with the naked eye, Hawke can see the tiny figures lined up on the rail at the stern. 

“What are they doing?” Bethany asks. 

Isabela raises her telescope, and then whirls and shouts to the crew, “Ready the boats!” 

The first shackled figure plummets into the sea. “Damn,” Hawke says. 

Isabela’s complement of lifeboats drop into the water and set off toward the captives. The ship charges on. “They’re doing this,” Fenris says, so low that Hawke has to lean closer, “because they know they’ve already lost.” 

When they are within earshot an hour later, the hunters on the Imperium ship start up a chant. Hawke hears only snatches of it; the wind takes everything except  _ ferrum _ and  _ perimus _ . Fortunately, they repeat it. Again, and again. 

“Can I get a translation?” Varric asks. 

Fenris says nothing, his jaw set. It’s Feynriel who answers, “They’re saying, ‘You too will wear iron when you drown.’” 

Varric says, “Next time I won’t ask.” 

“Get ready,” Hawke tells them all, though they have half an hour yet. Her palms itch and it is all she can do to keep from pacing. The shield Isabela gave her is little more than a buckler and the short sword is still foreign in her hand. She is barely a week back in this world, and after standing all morning her calves are tight and sore, but all of that just means she is worth perhaps eight of the bastards on that ship, rather than twelve. 

And she is surrounded by her people, all of them unequaled in their trades and at the height of their strength, on a ship of seasoned sailors loyal to the pirate queen of the Waking Sea. Hawke could swoon and still they would take the day. 

She looks to Fenris. The deep calm in his eyes nearly hides the wrath he is waiting to unleash. Desire swells alongside her restlessness, and she shoots him a grin. When this business is done, she is going to take him to her cabin and give him absolutely everything he deserves. 

Fenris sees it all in her eyes, of course--he lifts his chin and gives her a little smirk. 

When they are a ship’s length behind, the slavers try to turn about. By the time Isabela yells for them to brace themselves, she has already spun the wheel to port. 

Hawke clings to a guy line as the deck tilts, and then the slaver ship’s stern is before them, and then the hull splinters beneath the  _ Call _ ’s prow, and Hawke’s shoulder wrenches with the impact. The ship itself protests, but its groan is lost beneath the shouts of a dozen sailors and her companions as they rush forward. 

Grappling hooks secure the ships together, and then Hawke vaults the broken railing through a hail of crossbow bolts, and before her on the main deck are a dozen Tevinter hunters with their shields locked together. 

She doesn’t even have to look at Fenris; they both know. They are going to break that line. 

She runs with the dog at her heels. Fenris gets through first, of course, and she can see the hunters’ astonishment in the way the shields shift when he phases through them. One slips right and Hawke throws her shoulder at the gap it leaves. 

The shields part for her. In flashes of daylight and lyriumlight she finds the hunter on her right already bleeding out. She turns to the left and drives her sword below the hunter’s shield arm. One. 

Her nerves ease as soon as the hunter falls, calm settling over her gut. After weeks of helplessness and uncertainty, here at last is something she’s good at, something that makes sense. 

Frost branches across the deck and thickens beneath her boots, but she and the dog alike are practiced at fighting on Bethany’s ice. She grabs the next hunter by the collar and pulls them backward; they hit the deck, and she neatly cuts their throat. Two. 

The formation is crumbling now, and her third hunter abandons their place to face her. Behind the helmet their eyes are wild, and Hawke can’t help her grin. They all thought the  _ Call _ was an ordinary pirate ship. 

The hunter hesitates only a moment before rushing her. Hawke side-steps, and that hunter collides with another. They catch themselves admirably, but there’s no saving them when Hawke slides across the ice, shield first. In the confusion of limbs her blade finds its home. Three and four. 

Someone with sense shouts an order in Tevene, and the hunters turn clumsily inward. More distant cries suggest reinforcements arriving from below decks. She has long since lost sight of Fenris, though his handiwork surrounds her. Hawke faces three united shields now, which advance a step at a time. Her mabari harries their flank but the hunters pay him no mind. 

The middle hunter stops abruptly and relinquishes their shield to reveal Fenris’s hand emerging from their chest. Hawke does not waste the time he buys her. She snatches up the fallen shield--finally something with  _ weight _ , no more of this dancing about--and hoists its edge high to the next hunter’s gorget. Five. 

The last member of this miniature formation tries to backstep, but her mabari is waiting behind them. They topple heavily and Hawke runs them through beneath the breastplate. Six. 

She enjoys another flush of accomplishment and a well deserved pause for breath, when all at once the deck slips away from her feet and invisible fingers close around her throat. 

At first it feels like being back in the Fade, the weightlessness and the tightening grip. For a handful of panicked seconds she casts about the deck, but sees only corpses and still more hunters climbing the ladder from below. The mage she didn’t account for is somewhere behind her. 

Six, though, is not a bad run. 

Fenris’s markings dim when he sees her there, and it is enough of a distraction for Isabela to lose her footing; a hunter locks one arm around her neck. Bethany fires off spell after spell, but the slaver mage has a barrier around them both. Varric shouts something Hawke can’t hear over the pulse in her ears. She hopes he’ll gloss over this in his next book with a simple,  _ She died doing what she loved _ . 

As she watches in one final moment of perfect, dreamlike clarity, every slaver on the upper deck draws their dagger, places the point between gorget and helm, and shoves it upward. 

Hawke drops at the same moment they do. She’ll feel the impact in her elbows and knees for days, but unlike the slavers, she is alive. There is one left--the one who stabbed the mage--and by the time Hawke gets to her feet that one, too, is choking out their last bloody breath around their own blade. 

Up on the sterncastle deck where the slaver ship ends and the  _ Call _ begins, Feynriel opens his eyes and surveys his work. If this was any effort for him at all, he makes no sign of it. 

Varric toes a corpse. “Huh.” 

“Creeping shits,” Isabela agrees softly. 

Fenris is at Hawke’s side in an instant, his sword abandoned. “I can walk,” she tells him, but he only pushes her hair out of her face, looks in her eyes, and clutches her to him. 

Down in the hold they find forty-two humans and elves. The boatmen pulled six more from the water. Isabela asks Fenris to do the honors. Hawke can see the pride with which he brings the borrowed warhammer down on the bolt that secures their chains. 

“I couldn’t find a saw,” Isabela tells Hawke, and Hawke shoves her gently. 

\- - - 

Some hours later she sits to one side of the quarterdeck on the  _ Call _ , as out of the way as she can be. They push off from the slaver ship and turn back toward the coast--limping from the damage, but whole. 

She has given her cabin to a family from Fereldan, and she waits for Alwyn to assign her a hammock below. Down on the main deck her mabari plays with three small children. The euphoria of the fight is long gone. 

“You see what I mean?” she sighs. “Nothing sticks. How many slavers did we kill in Kirkwall?” 

“There is no power that can compel the Imperium to stop their practices.” Fenris’s voice is hard, and his shoulder is warm against hers. “Not even you.” 

She is tired, and the cook has not yet distributed the evening rations, and after being so near to death again, this nihilist mood is unavoidable. “How many of the people we rescued were carried off again when we weren’t there to stop it?” 

“Hawke. Forty-eight people are free today.” 

And they have done so much in the years between, on the overland routes. They can’t be everywhere. Still. “ _ Forty-eight _ , Fenris.” Forty-eight people slipped through the cracks, past Aveline’s guards, over half the Waking Sea, on just one ship. Who is their champion? 

_ Did you think you mattered, Hawke? _

She rubs her palms on her trousers. “When I was small, and the twins were still babies, I almost never heard my mother complain. Only once or twice late at night, when she thought I was asleep. She said it was no life for children.” 

Fenris turns to look at her. She dodges his gaze and presses on, “I waited to see what kind of life was, but we just kept running. And then I was grown, and I thought I wouldn’t want that life anyway, but then during those last few months in Kirkwall, I thought, maybe _. Maybe now, maybe here _ . But now...” Her mouth twists around a sour taste. Watching the main deck, she says, “I don’t think such a life exists.” 

“Hawke?” 

“You did tell me the night before I left that you’d give me a token to remember you by.” 

Fenris blinks. “I only meant to make you sore in the saddle.”  

“That too.” She tries a smile. “I should have told you sooner. I’m sorry.”

“Be sorry instead that you thought I hadn’t noticed.” At her stare Fenris goes on, “Refusing wine? Taking up ranged weapons? Hawke, please.” He softens it by nudging her knee with his. 

She shouldn’t be surprised. When she got Varric’s letter, he knew by her face and posture that she was leaving before she finished reading it. “Are you frightened?” 

“I’d be a fool not to be. Are you?” 

“Terrified.” Yet it feels right. She has felt it from the moment Bethany paused in the midst of assessing the Fade’s effects on her and asked Hawke, _ Did you know you’re pregnant?  _ And she will not face it with fear. 

After a long silence he says, “Is this what you want?” 

“This, and you.” 

“You have me. Always.” 

She has never doubted it, and still her relief is a heady thing. How simple the words; how much she needs them now. And more. “Then will you marry me?” 

Through half a smile he says, “In the middle of the sea?” He of all people should know she will only take that as a challenge. She stands and tries to pull him up by the hand, but he does most of the work himself. 

Isabela is easily found when they need her most. When Hawke asks her to marry them she stifles a smile and says, “I thought I made it clear I’m not the type to settle down.” 

“Isabela.” 

“My cabin, five minutes. And wipe the blood off your faces first, you disgusting romantics.” 

They gather up Bethany and Varric and Feynriel--who, as the hero of the day, is already well plied with the sailors’ rum rations. And they do obtain a damp rag, and shed their blood-spattered armor outside Isabela’s cabin. 

“You realize this is only a formality,” Fenris says as he gently scrubs the traces of battle from Hawke’s face. 

“How formal can it be? Look what we’re wearing.” 

“I bet I could find you a dress,” offers Bethany. 

Hawke makes a rude gesture at her, then goes to work on Fenris’s face. When his nose is clean, she kisses it. 

With a dreamy sigh, Bethany leans on Varric’s shoulder. “Can I tell them?” she asks Hawke. 

“Tell us what, Sunshine?” 

“My sister is heavy with child.” 

Hawke drops her head to Fenris’s chest, and feels a laugh he does not voice. 

“The same sister that charged straight into a shield wall earlier today? That sister?” 

“Good, you’ve met her.” 

“What I don’t get,” Varric ruminates, “is how that’s possible. Ship’s not big. We would have heard them going at it. Did it happen before I got on?” 

“ _ Varric _ .” 

“I’m just saying, Hawke.” 

“It happened prior to the Fade,” Feynriel says, and now they all stare at him. “I didn’t want to say anything, but it was obvious when we found you.” 

Which means Hawke was third to know. She groans. 

“Way to keep a secret, Dreamer.” 

Like a late summer rain, Isabela arrives and lets them all into her cabin. She arranges Hawke and Fenris just so and looks them over, making no attempt to hide her delight. “Dearly beloved… one of us should probably have prepared a few words.” 

Varric clears his throat, but fortunately Fenris speaks first, his hands tight around Hawke’s. “H--Marian. I am yours.” 

As easy as that she breaks, holding his hand to her lips. Isabela takes pity. “Do you accept him? Nodding is fine.” 

“Yes,” Hawke manages. 

Isabela claps once. “Done! You may now stop crying.” 

“What?” Varric says. “We wanted speeches!” 

“It was perfect,” says Bethany. 

“Out,” says Isabela in her admiral voice, and the others go after congratulations and brief hugs, and in the following silence she smiles broadly at Hawke and Fenris. “So! It’s your wedding night, and you get a real bed. No excuses now.” 

Hawke’s astonishment does finally stop her crying. Is this everyone’s business? “I’ve been recovering.” 

“You expect me to believe neither of you knows how to be  _ tender _ ? Honestly. I won’t insult you both by barring the door, but I hope you’ll lock it, and not come out until morning. Many happy returns.” She takes the dog with her, and shuts the door firmly. 

“I wasn’t trying to avoid it,” she says, half to the door and half to Fenris. 

“I know.” 

“I’ve had to sort through--” She scrubs at her eyes. He knows that too. He has been there for every nightmare. 

“Hawke. Tell me what you need me to say.” 

How well he knows her. How hard they worked, and how long, for what they have. How dare the Fade try to take that. How  _ dare _ it put its words in his mouth. “Say you l--”

He gently pulls her hands away and presses his brow to hers. “I love you, Hawke.” She opens her eyes, and his are the softest of greens. “I love you, and I love the child we’re going to raise.” 

She’s crying again. “I will never,” she vows, “ask you to stay behind again.” 

At once his lips are on hers. She breathes in his scent along with the smell of salt that suffuses everything on the  _ Call _ . She puts her hands in his hair. He works at the ties of her tunic, but he stops at the sound of paper. His fingers find the letters tucked into her breastband, and he surely feels how fast her heart is beating. 

Wordlessly he removes the letters and unfolds the one that isn’t addressed to him. Hawke watches his jaw tense. 

_ Hawke _ , it says,  _ I’m sure you’re having the time of your life, but there’s a job and I could really use your expertise. No pay, except maybe saving the world. You know how it is.  _

Varric didn’t even mention Corypheus until the third paragraph. Always burying the lede. 

Fenris turns away, and crosses to the door. The letters he sets on the sideboard; the door he quietly locks. 

He turns back to her. “If there’s any pain--” 

“ _ Fuck _ tenderness,” says Hawke. 

Fenris takes her wrist and pulls her hard against him. Their next kiss has teeth. It ends only so Fenris can yank her tunic over her head and unwind her breastband, careful but insistent, and Hawke is trying to get his leggings over his hips but she can’t seem to stop trembling at the sensation radiating from his mouth on her earlobe. He unbuttons her trousers and goes to his knees, and his lips and his hands glide over the place beneath her scar, where she has just begun to swell. 

“Hawke,” he gasps. “Hawke. Let me taste you.” 

She whimpers. He hooks his fingers into her trousers and smalls, and pulls them down to her boots in one motion. His warm palms quest up her thighs and she widens her stance for them, and when his mouth alights, the heat of it shoots straight to her spine and she can only hold onto his hair and try to keep her balance. 

“Hawke,” he tries to say with his tongue still somewhere between her clitoris and her cunt, and she starts to laugh but then he does something absolutely unholy and she will not be able to stay upright if he continues that way. She tugs a handful of his hair upward and he follows, trailing wet kisses up to her collarbone. 

Hawke considers the room, the bed, the broad desk. The oak chair behind it is wide enough to sit sideways, wide enough to accommodate her calves bracketing his thighs. She steers him there. He undresses without removing her hand from his hair, and settles back against age-worn leather with a sigh that belies his grip on the chair’s arms and the expectation in his eyes. 

She watches him watch her as she gets her boots off, then makes a bundle of her clothes and tucks it beneath the small of his back. Gripping the back of the chair, she kneels over him. 

He lets go of the chair and sets one hand between her breasts. The other hand positions himself, and when he looks up at her again, Hawke eases downward. 

Only the head of his cock is in her when she has to stop and bury her face against his neck. How she  _ aches _ . Two months is the longest she’s been without him since Kirkwall. Her arms and thighs tremble and the edge of the chair digs into her hands. Fenris makes soft sounds in her ear, Tevene and common blending together under his breath. His hands skim up her back. 

She fills her lungs, and on the exhale she takes in more of him until her hips rest on his and her head swims. Inside her, he burns so sweetly. She rests her weight on his chest and relaxes her arms. 

Fenris swallows, and between her shoulder blades his fingernails bite. Hawke jolts and nearly loses him in the motion. She lifts her head and holds his gaze as she sinks home again, not half so gently this time. He grunts, and bares his teeth, and his hands move down to scratch where her thighs and buttocks meet. 

This time when she leans back he follows, his teeth at her chest. Hawke drives forward and Fenris rolls his hips to meet her, and there is nothing tender about it and it is  _ good _ , a grounding thing, coursing through every limb. She gulps air and rocks against him, finding a rhythm like a small-scale, fast-paced echo of the sway of the  _ Call _ . 

He winds one arm around her waist. It limits her motion but keeps her breasts conveniently near his mouth, so she resorts to bearing downward on the fullness of him. His lips close around her nipple and behind them his tongue flicks once, twice. 

A climax seizes her, sudden and shattering. He feels her tense, and grips her shoulders and thrusts up, and the breath leaves her in a cry. Hawke collapses over him, her brow against his markings, their sweat mingling. 

“Hawke.” The name rumbles in his chest. After a moment she remembers it’s hers. He runs his fingers down her thighs, lightly now. 

“Spirit’s willing,” she laments. Perhaps after another week of regular meals and training, on a day when she hasn’t fought a sea battle, she can fuck in a chair until dawn. “I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” he says. His arms cross behind her and he lifts, and Hawke musters the strength to keep her legs wrapped around him because--sweet Maker--he is still inside her. She lets out a small sound against the side of his neck. 

And then her eyes open, because what meets her back is not the silk-piled bed, but the plank wall. Fenris’s face is before her, his hands strong under her thighs, and he presses in slow. She can feel how close he is, the heat of his need. 

“Yes,” Hawke sighs, locking her ankles behind him. He covers her mouth with his, and she holds his lower lip gingerly between her teeth as his thrusts grow faster. 

She puts her hands on his face and her tongue in his mouth, and he buries himself deep and comes for her. 

Fenris slides out of her with a groan like old beams, and lets her gently down. Without him she sags, muscles slack. He finds her breastband and wipes himself, then gives her the other end. A mercy, that for the next few months at least they need not worry about tinctures and teas. Not that the last dose was effective. 

When she’s clean he helps her to the bed. It smells like Isabela, which means it smells like the ship, and that isn’t as distracting as Hawke thought it would be when the evening began. 

“We missed supper,” she remembers. 

“I’m satisfied,” Fenris says, and she must admit she is too. She is asleep within seconds, tangled with him under layers of plundered silk. 

She wakes sometime in the night with him at her back, hands on her body and a breathless “Please, Hawke,” in her ear. She shifts until she’s flush with him, and he finds her entrance and, after a series of small adjustments, he is moving in her again. 

It’s languid and slow, but by the time he finishes, she is ravenous. She reaches behind her to grasp his hair, and he turns her onto her back and kisses down to her navel, taking all the silk with him except one slender piece that he pulls slowly across her breasts. It cools her skin even as his tongue drags feverishly over her cunt. 

Hawke balls her fists in the sheet and whispers urgent and meaningless things, and “Please,” always, “please.” He grants it, working at her until she arches and the silk slides away and Hawke comes back down after it, panting. 

Fenris wipes his mouth and rests his head over her thundering heart. They sleep there until Hawke wakes, needful again, at dawn. She draws her knees up on either side of him, but her fingers are only halfway to the tips of his ears when she notices Isabela, sitting sideways in the oak chair. 

“Don’t let me stop you,” Isabela says, and Fenris is awake at once. 

“You picked your own lock?” 

“Sweet thing, it seems like that’s all I ever do anymore. We’re a few hours from Wycome. Bethany has offered to help get people settled in the city, but our passengers would like to speak with the two of you first. When you’re dressed and fed, and have everything--” she waves vaguely-- “out of your system. For some reason, they seem to think you’re the leaders of this merry band of misfits.” 

“Did you make it clear that you’re the admiral?” Fenris mumbles from the vicinity of Hawke’s breasts. 

“Of course, but that doesn’t mean I have  _ ideas _ .” 

“I do,” says Fenris. 

“Good to hear a night with Hawke can still bring on revelations.” 

“You’re going to hate it.” 

“So it’s a good idea,” Hawke says. 

Isabela doesn’t take the bait. “Let our new friends decide, whenever you’re decent.” 

She vanishes out the door, which locks crisply behind her, and only then does Hawke curse with realization. “She had my shirt on.” 

“So wear one of hers,” Fenris says, leaning up on his elbows. 

“They’re too tight.” 

He smiles down at her. “All part of her plan.” 

In the end she takes one of the larger cuts of silk and wraps it about herself, struggling to tie it until Fenris secures the ends in some mystifying way. The fabric meets halfway down her chest; she’ll go without a breastband until she has a chance to wash it. All in all, it’s a very piratical look. 

Fenris brings both letters and tucks them beneath the silk, over her heart. He kisses her softly. They step out side by side to face the day. 

\- - - 

As Wycome draws near, Hawke links arms with Bethany and walks to the bow. “Avoid rosemary if you can, and sylphweed obviously. Brew all the raspberry leaf you can get. You can find a midwife anywhere, but send for me if you have any questions, or anything seems out of the ordinary. Rhiannon at the Harbor Inn will forward my letters.” 

Hawke imagines writing,  _ Dear sister, I seem to be planning to bear a child, on purpose. Is anything about that ordinary?  _ and she covers her smile. “I expect Feynriel will know where we end up.” 

“Or Varric.” Hawke glances sharply at Bethany. “Last night he cornered Isabela and practically begged her to take him along as far as Minrathous.” 

“I… see.” 

“Do you? Because I don’t. Wycome is much closer to the Inquisition.” 

“Mm,” Hawke agrees, looking back down the length of the ship. Near the mainmast Fenris speaks with a group of refugees. Isabela lazes at the helm. And far back at the stern, Varric says something that makes Feynriel laugh. “How many are going with you?” 

“Barely a dozen. I think most of them want to put more distance between themselves and those slavers.” 

Hawke bites her knuckle. They’re only sailing farther north. “What will you do next?” 

Bethany leans on the rail before the bowsprit. “A bit of research, I think.” Hawke waits for her to say more, but she only watches the growing city. 

She walks her sister down to the pier when the  _ Call _ docks. Fenris trails them. “I know it’s foolish to tell you to be safe,” Bethany says, clinging to her. “But… be free.” 

“And you,” Hawke answers. 

When she releases her, Fenris offers his hand, but Bethany hugs him instead. “Congratulations, Serahs Hawke.” 

Hawke huffs in surprise, but Fenris only inclines his head. Together they watch her disappear into the city, along with one family and eight other refugees, all of them with new lives ahead. 

“So,” she says to Fenris, looping her arm around his waist, “what exactly is your plan?” 

\- - - 

“I don’t like this,” Isabela mutters. “It’s bad boatmanship.” 

Hawke furrows her brow. “Boat… man… ship. That seems redundant.” 

“Boatmanship,” Varric echoes. “Boatman _ ship _ .” 

“Shh,” says Enfer, though as far as Hawke can see (which isn’t far at the moment), Fenris is watching for something, not listening. 

It’s quiet, apart from waves on the rocks that are much too close. At the bow, Feynriel does what he did for them in the Fade, parting the mist to the north and east while keeping the  _ Call _ shrouded. Not that there is anyone here to spot them, only sharp cliffs and the stars that shine through the breaks in the mist. 

“We’re nearly there,” Fenris says as they drift past an outcropping that rears out of the mist like a living thing, and even he is whispering. It seems to be what the night demands. “On my signal, turn hard to starboard and drop anchor.” Hawke sees Isabela’s frown, but the admiral does not protest. 

There is much here to dislike. The  _ Call _ sighted Seheron after sunset and caught the last of the evening winds before furling most of her sails and proceeding on momentum. Their passengers are below decks in case of any trouble, though Hawke is sure none of them sleep, even at this late hour. This is not the distance from Tevinter they hoped for, but Fenris asked for their trust, and they gave it. 

They have passed other northbound Imperium ships these past ten days, and every time Hawke’s fingers itched, but the  _ Call _ is at capacity and they cannot reasonably fight with a ship full of refugees. It only occurred to her after the third ship to ask Feynriel how close he has to be to do his thing. 

“I can do it from another country,” he reminded her, “and I’ve been doing it.” Since then, she has felt a little better. 

Another spear of stone looms over them, barely clearing the crow’s nest. “Now,” Fenris hisses, and Isabela heaves the wheel over, and two seamen drop the anchor, and Hawke grabs the rail as the  _ Call _ voices her distress at this rough handling, but she holds fast and when all stills, they are in the center of a little cove where a crescent of beach rises to cliffs all around, pocked with caves. 

“Boats,” says Isabela, and her crew stirs to motion. 

In ones and twos and families the passengers emerge onto the main deck. Hawke joins Fenris at the rail to wait for the first boat. “Strange place you’ve led us to,” she says. 

He smiles, his eyes on the water that laps at the hull. 

They row to shore, and Hawke’s boots sink into damp sand. She raises her lantern toward the sandstone cliff face. Her mabari sniffs at the scrub. “You’ve been here before?” 

“I have,” Fenris says. “There’s a forest at the top of the cliff, and fish in the bay.” 

And a war farther inland, and Tevinter’s shadow stretching across the sea. Is any place safer? 

She looks back at the other boats, the refugees climbing out of them, the families. The best she can offer them is freedom, and to share in what they build here, and help to preserve it. 

Fog rolls down the cliffs, across the sand. Feynriel waves a hand to dispel it, but it doesn’t part for him. Varric whistles and shrugs Bianca off his shoulder, and only then does Hawke notice the silent figures approaching through the mist. She reaches for her sword, but Fenris raises his hand. 

“Let me speak to them.” 

“Alone?” 

“Yes.” There is a heaviness in his gaze and she cannot bring herself to argue. Hawke steps back to join Varric and Feynriel at the water’s edge. 

The fog envelops Fenris. He told her once he could not bring himself to go back because he felt unworthy. She would not have expected him to return to Minrathous either, or to the Fade. But here they are. 

Soft voices speak a language she doesn’t recognize. Hawke resists the urge to pace as the conversation stretches on. Behind her, thirty-six people hold their breath.

The fog withdraws, and it seems to take a weight from Fenris. He turns toward her, expression open, and Hawke can’t help but run to him. She puts her hands on his face and looks in his eyes. There is something new there, something that she could not have given him.

They light a bonfire on the sand, though the refugees will go back to the  _ Call _ until daylight. The flames chase away the natural fog and turn the cliffs orange. A familiar comfort—something these people have not had in some time.

Hawke stretches out on the sand when the fire is down to embers and the boats depart, leaving her, Fenris, Feynriel, and Varric. She takes the creased papers from her breastband, and hands Fenris the one addressed to him. She reads the letter Varric sent her one last time, and feeds it to the fire.

Fenris puts his next to hers. They dwindle away to ash. Hawke lifts her head and looks across the pile of charred driftwood. “No offense, Varric.”

Varric smiles. As rubbish as he is at endings, he knows closure when he sees it. “None taken.”


	4. Seheron

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We haven’t even filled half the caves,” says Aoife, drawing him back to their circle. She doesn’t meet anyone else’s eyes, just considers what bit of fish to have next, and it seems she’s said her piece. 
> 
> “And we can build at the top of the cliffs,” Tain adds. 
> 
> Hawke gapes at them, then turns to Fenris, who looks away. “This is not something we can just decide in a night,” she protests. 
> 
> “Maybe,” says Bethany, “but it would be nice to give Isabela an answer before she has to leave.” 
> 
> “I can’t think of any place better to take them,” Isabela says. 
> 
> “Mark me, Champion,” says Tain, and Hawke closes her mouth at once. “If there is a chance to do for others what you lot did for us, no one here will turn it down.”

A single footfall on narrow planks--soft, but not soft enough. “An attempt was made,” Fenris murmurs without opening his eyes. 

“Unfair,” Hawke says, settling onto the mat beside him. “I can barely walk.” 

So close to her time, she is as round as the bay. It charms him as much as it bewilders her. “Learn now, and think of how stealthy you’ll be in a month.” 

“Yes, no one will hear me over the squalling of the creature I’ve birthed.” 

“Children as distractions in combat. An intriguing notion.” 

“Who allowed us to become parents?” 

It’s said in jest, but they both fall silent and somber. 

Everything they have, they had to feel their way through, like following the wall of a cave, or a length of twine. Hawke has a long list of what not to do, but that is not the same as knowing what  _ to _ do. What Fenris knows for certain is that his mother kept them together even when he and Varania were old enough to be sold away, and that whoever he was before, he loved her enough to compete for her freedom. 

He and Hawke have carefully observed the three families that share this place. There are things he thinks he would do differently--most involve permissiveness--but he can’t truly know without being in their stead. If the others clutch their children too close, it is only because they have seen them used as leverage to ensure their submission. If he had to choose only one thing to wish for his child it would be freedom, but how will he feel the first time they wander beyond the cliffs alone? 

What pitiless god decided children should still arrive helpless in  _ this _ world? 

“I finished the new downspout,” Hawke tells him, a welcome change of topic. The new downspout means fresh water for the uninhabited caves on the south cliffs. They have more space than they can fill--fortunately their number will grow soon enough. 

“You must be famished.” 

Her fingers lace into his hair. He can feel from that one touch how badly she wants to put her arms around him, but. “Too hot to be hungry.” 

He and the rest of the village doze through the height of afternoon, on platforms they built in front of the caves with space between the slats for breezes to pass. The caves themselves radiate cooler air at ground level, so there, on his back in thatched shade, is the best place to be after the morning’s work. 

Life here has taken on a rhythm. If Hawke seems out of step with it, well, that is her way. She works later than the others, carries the heaviest loads, spends the remainder of the day recovering. Fereldan to the bone, transplanted to northern soil. But the winter crops of her childhood, the root vegetables that turn sweet after the first freeze, do not grow on Seheron. 

Fenris raises his head and follows the pull of her fingers to place a kiss on her smiling lips. Then he gets to his feet and fetches a ripe fruit from the back of their cave. He slices it with one of the wicked little knives Hawke carves from shells. 

At the smell alone, her stomach whines. Fenris snorts and returns to her. She pushes up to her elbows and takes the first slice delicately between her teeth, then lays back and throws her arm across her eyes with a sigh. 

Fenris eats the next slice as he watches her. The first time they bartered with the Fog Warriors, when their fishing hauls grew abundant enough for trade, they asked for cloth. Hawke had reached the limits of her trousers; the rest of the village was down to threads. 

Fog Warrior linen puts cambric to shame--nearly transparent and sunbleached to hide salt stains. Hawke wears it wrapped from shoulder to ribcage, and free-flowing below. For smallclothes she has improvised a loose layer that reaches halfway down her thighs. 

Fenris gives her another piece of fruit. A drop of its juice remains on her upper lip. He bends down and licks it off, and Hawke draws a sharp breath through her nose. 

One arm still across her face, she fumbles the fruit out of his hand and squeezes a drop between the swell of her breasts. 

Fenris holds back a laugh, plants his hand beside her, and lets her feel his breath on her chest. Like the rest of her, her breasts have grown heavier. They brim at the fabric where it dips in a long triangle down her sternum. After the Fade she was so gaunt, all ridges from collarbone to navel. How the fullness of her, the flush of her skin, belies that now. 

A year ago, he thought he knew every inch of her. 

He presses the flat of his tongue over the drop and tastes the fruit and her sweat alike. Hawke swears quietly and grasps his hair again. He moves lower. 

He has just rounded her stomach when, down on the beach, her mabari barks twice and there is an answering cry from the direction of the water, and Hawke says, “Bela!” 

“If I had a copper,” Fenris laments, but Hawke only makes a face at him. 

By the time he gets to his feet she is down on the beach, kicking up sprays of sand as she runs to the water, and the leather handgrip of the descender rises forty feet back up to their platform. Fenris catches it and pushes off from the planks, and the rope slides through the pulley overhead. The counterweight was calibrated for Hawke; Fenris’s trip down is more leisurely. 

As he drifts to the ground, their neighbors peer out of the other caves and platforms. The Surishas’ younger daughter, Opel, waves to him, and he waves back. Beyond them lives Zyani, the Fog Warrior who took a cave for herself the week after they arrived. Her serene gaze is on the ship in the bay as she winds a new wrapping around the grip of her fishknife. 

Still a couple meters up, Fenris releases the descender and lands in soft sand. Hawke’s mabari trots beside him as far as the water’s edge. Hawke waits, up to her hips in the waves of the  _ Call _ ’s arrival. The crew readies a boat, and Fenris can see a small figure climb over the rail. 

“There’s Bethany!” Hawke waves wildly, and Fenris takes her other hand, if for no other reason than to keep her from swimming out to meet the boat. “Damn,” Hawke says softly. “This is really happening, isn’t it?” 

She means the birth of course, and with Bethany arriving it does seem more real--no longer an abstract problem for future-them. Still, Fenris pretends to misunderstand, and pinches Hawke’s wrist. She gives him a smile. 

Isabela stands in the stern of the little boat and calls, “I brought gifts, and a guest, and news. Which do you want first?” 

“Tell me the news, and then give me my sister!” 

“There are fourteen refugees waiting on a ship in Llomerryn,” Isabela shouts back, and with her words comes another wave. Fenris grips Hawke’s hand tightly, but even with both feet planted, when she leaves him to walk to shore alongside the boat, he feels as though he’s lost his balance. 

Isabela tells them the rest while supper cooks. She found the ship, a derelict she assumed, drifting just below the Northern Passage. The captives struck the Imperium’s colors, and piled slaver corpses neatly in the hold, but not a one of them knew how to sail. “They would have starved after a few more days. All they could tell me about what happened was that a man, or perhaps an elf, appeared in their dreams, and told them to find Hawke.” 

“Oh, shit,” Hawke says in a small voice. 

Isabela’s smile is half pity, half amusement. “You can’t stop collecting strays, sweet thing.” 

“What did you tell them?” Fenris demands, his hand still tight around Hawke’s. 

“That I’d send a message,” Isabela answers. He relaxes minutely. 

San, the village’s best cook, sets out five broad platters of roast fish on the stones around the fire, and the villagers descend on them. Tonight Fenris shares his meal with Hawke, Bethany, Isabela, Morin and Aoife Surisha, Tain Gilian the thatcher, and Zyani. 

He barely tastes the fish. Hawke picks at the greens, face ashen and gaze distant. Fenris looks past her, to the others, and then to the  _ Call _ , and beyond it where the cliffs nearly seal them in, out of sight of Minrathous. 

“We haven’t even filled half the caves,” says Aoife, drawing him back to their circle. She doesn’t meet anyone else’s eyes, just considers what bit of fish to have next, and it seems she’s said her piece. 

“And we can build at the top of the cliffs,” Tain adds. 

Hawke gapes at them, then turns to Fenris, who looks away. “This is not something we can just decide in a night,” she protests. 

“Maybe,” says Bethany, “but it would be nice to give Isabela an answer before she has to leave.” 

“I can’t think of any place better to take them,” Isabela says. 

“Mark me, Champion,” says Tain, and Hawke closes her mouth at once. “If there is a chance to do for others what you lot did for us, no one here will turn it down.” 

In the end, after the platters are cleared away and the stars are out and the firelight throws their shadows on the cliff walls, they put it to a vote. Hawke recuses herself--”We wouldn’t have to do this if it weren’t for me”--and walks down the beach with Bethany and Isabela. Zyani stays as a neutral party to see that everyone has a chance to speak, including the children. 

There is no dissent. 

Overcome as if by the waves, Fenris makes his way to where Hawke sits on the crate Isabela brought with her. He sets his hand on her shoulder, and he looks to Isabela. “We’ll take them in,” he says around the tightness in his throat, “and any others you find.” 

Hawke’s hand closes over his. The muscles are taut in her shoulder. They will not face this with fear. They will  _ not _ . 

“Then it’s time for gifts!” says Isabela. “Hawke, get up.” Hawke sighs, but does, and Isabela unlocks the crate, and she takes out a wrapped object which she presents to Hawke rather like one would present an infant, and Fenris looks back into the crate and cannot resist reaching down to touch the gilt and leather spines of ten new books. 

“Not a moment too soon,” Hawke declares, her voice grimly pleased. In her hands is a replica of Isabela’s crossbow. 

“Oh, and this.” Isabela takes a letter from her bodice and presents it to Fenris. It’s nearly worn through at the creases from many hands, and many more miles than the true distance between him and the sender. 

“Thank you,” he says carefully, all too aware of Hawke’s eyes on him. “Excuse me.” 

He climbs to their cave and lights a lamp inside, sits with his back against the sandstone wall to steady himself, and breaks the seal. 

_ It is good to hear from you,  _ (and here, though she has not scratched anything out, he can feel Varania’s hesitation, the struggle of trying to decide what to call him)  _ Brother _ .  _ A surprise, but a good one. This will be a briefer letter than you hoped. I knew nothing of our father. Neither you nor Mother ever spoke of him. I think he must be dead.  _

_ But Mother, yes. I can tell you about Mother.  _

He reads the rest of the letter, and then reads it again, then snuffs the lamp and stretches out on the mattress. The ladder creaks; Hawke is not even trying to be quiet. She lays down beside him, and Fenris turns to nest his hips to hers, his chest to her back. Here is all he has ever known that was not vapor and ash. The only solid place to rest. Everything else gets stolen away under his feet, grain by--

“I keep asking myself, how do we do this?” Hawke whispers. “What have I done?” 

He lays his arm across her ribs. 

“How do we prepare?” she goes on. “There’s no power that can stop the Imperium.” 

“Then we won’t stop either,” he says into her hair. He thinks of his sister, of the Liberati with one foot still in the shackles, of a world with no other place to go. 

He stays awake a long time, and when he sleeps, he dreams of eyes like his and arms that were always full, yet always made room for him. 

\- - - 

They brought three dozen free people to this place, among them carpenters, weavers, scholars, cooks, children. Not a fighter among them, at first.

They started with swordplay early in the morning. Hawke narrated the lessons, and Fenris suffered her demonstrations. After the first few mornings he took to adding comically exaggerated falls at the end of their pantomimes; it made the Surisha girls laugh. 

When Zyani arrived they started on traps and javelins and hunting bows, and Hawke became the student. 

He is accustomed to being in the center of the battle, and never far from her. A place where he feels in control, feels as though they can turn the tide. It will be strange, not having her at his back--although technically she will still be there, and in a better position to watch it. 

“Straighten your spine,” Isabela says, and Hawke does. “Flex your elbow.” Hawke does. “Breathe out, and fire.” 

Hawke does. The bolt lands dead center in a tree trunk at the far side of the clearing, and Bethany whistles low. Hawke turns to make sure Fenris is watching. He lifts the corner of his mouth at her. 

“It’s so strange,” Hawke says, plucking at the crossbow’s string. “It doesn’t feel like anything. What do I do, keep shooting until they’re pincushions?” 

“You bury it,” Isabela says, raising her own crossbow, “in their eye.” Her shot splits Hawke’s bolt in twain. 

“All right, show-off.” 

“A handspan higher now. Nock. Aim. Loose.” 

Their bolts strike half a second apart with scarcely a hair’s breadth between them. “Higher,” Isabela says. “Nock. Aim. Loose.” 

Hawke’s bolt misses the tree. 

“Sloppy stance,” Isabela chides, but Fenris tears his eyes away from Hawke just long enough to confirm that Bethany saw how Hawke bent just a little, sees the change in her expression now. “Again.” 

They fire, and Hawke’s bolt lands, but it’s wide. “I think you’re getting worse at this.” 

“It’s hot,” Hawke says through her teeth. 

“Scrape together some stamina. Nock. Aim--” 

“I need water.” Hawke sets the crossbow down carefully, and flees the clearing. 

Isabela stares after her. “Who was that strange, cowardly woman? She looked remarkably like Hawke.” 

Bethany starts back for the village. “I’ll tell Aoife, and gather clean rags. Isabela, would you get some water boiling?” 

Fenris swallows against a too-dry mouth. “What do I do?” 

“Go to her.” 

He turns to do so. “Fenris, wait.” Isabela sets her hand on his shoulder; there is a profound urgency in her eyes. “I can’t say when it happened,” she says softly, “but you and I both know that at some point, Hawke definitely promised to name her firstborn after me.” 

“Isabela,” he says, mirroring her stance and expression, “Varric beat you to it.” She makes an offended noise as he returns to the ladder at the cliff’s edge. 

He finds Hawke pacing in their cave. “I think it’s happening,” she says miserably.  

“Does it hurt?” 

“Not yet.” She turns away for another circuit of the floor. “It’s like a belt… tightening and then releasing.” 

He intercepts her and presses his brow to hers. “What do you need?” 

Hawke lets her eyes close, raises her arms to rest them on his shoulders. “Just this, for now.” 

Fenris stays there as long as she does, and bears as much of the weight as she will put on him. He studies her eyelashes against her cheeks, the birthmark across her nose, the flare of her nostrils that he knows well from the instant before a fight. 

She can’t fight her way through this. She will have to feel it. 

She draws away and paces a few more steps, and Fenris gets her a waterskin and a bit of fruit. She makes a face at the fruit, but he doesn’t have to tell her she ought to keep her strength up while she can still tolerate eating. An hour will come when she can’t. 

She is wiping the juice away when Bethany calls from below. Hawke shuffles to the edge of the platform. 

“Do you want to get in the water?” 

“How am I supposed to come down?” Bethany gestures to the cliff face, and Fenris looks, and Hawke lets out a little disbelieving laugh. At the end of their descender rope, in place of the handle grip, dangles a reed basket that could hold a horse. Zyani and Aoife hold the other end of the rope, down on the sand. “Who had time to make this?” Hawke demands as Fenris helps her in. 

Zyani answers in her tribe’s dialect, and Fenris translates, “It’s a gift from the Fog Warriors.” 

Hawke gapes at him and then at Zyani. Fenris smiles down at her as the basket creaks away from the platform. He takes their ladder to the sand, and finds Isabela waiting beside the dog. 

“I brought cotton and wax.” Fenris peers at her. “What?” she says. “I don’t like hearing her in pain.” 

He has to admit he doesn’t either. “There’s a long day ahead,” Fenris tells her. Hawke groans with the effort of getting out of the basket, and Fenris leaves Isabela, wincing, to her cotton and wax. 

The cove is quiet as they walk into the high tide. The others stay ashore for the moment. Hawke goes in up to her waist, then up to her collarbone, and lets out a sigh. The fabric of her dress drifts around her thighs. Her hand reaches back to find Fenris. “Don’t let me float away.” 

Fenris wraps his arms under hers, and Hawke leans her head back to his shoulder and shuts her eyes. He gazes past the  _ Call _ , at the cliff walls. “My mother loved the sea,” he says, as much to himself as to Hawke. A story half remembered, it could have happened to someone else. ”She would stop at the docks and watch the waves.” Could she have conceived of how far her son would travel, and how close he would end up? 

Hawke tilts her head, listening for more, but there isn’t any more. 

Sometime later she draws a breath with pain in it, despite the warm water and the weightlessness, and he eases her back toward shore so Bethany can look her over. “You’re progressing,” Bethany says. “A while longer yet.” 

“ _ How _ long?” Hawke grates after a swig of fresh water from a skin. 

“How do you feel?” 

“Overcooked. And pissed.” 

“A while,” Bethany reiterates, and for a time they walk the shallows together. Hawke stops to stretch, to crouch with the next pain, to ask Fenris to press against her back. He digs in with the heels of his hands and she groans, with relief this time. 

“What if you just… reached in and took the babe out?” she asks once. 

“Not funny,” he says. 

Hawke isn’t smiling. “When I ask again, I’ll be very, very serious.” 

The wet linen clings to her, and Fenris makes sure she’s in between the pains before he puts his hand over the long white scar the Arishok’s sword left beneath her ribs. “Is it better or worse than this?” 

She laughs bitterly. “It’s different. Duller, but deeper. I feel it down to my toes.” 

“Remember the breath.” 

“Yes, the breath, the breath.” But she does go back to the deep, steady breaths Bethany taught her to use through the worst of it. His hand on the scar rises and falls with them, until she asks him to press on her again. 

The tide has turned by the time she no longer has a respite between the pains. Her groans become ragged, deep sounds of suffering that nearly send him to Isabela for cotton and wax. From the shore, her mabari whines. 

“How long now?” Hawke pants. 

“Soon,” promises Bethany. 

Hawke crouches with nearly all her weight supported by Fenris. He looks down at her, his elbows under her armpits, the water eddying against her belly. Beyond her hips, the retreating sea takes some of the sand with it. He feels them sink with every wave, feels a charge in the air as she tenses, ready to push. 

What starts as a growl becomes a cry that rings off the cliffs. Fenris bends, mindful of their balance, to kiss her brow. “Again,” urges Bethany, waiting below. 

Hawke nearly levers Fenris backward with the strain. 

“Again.” Hawke lets out a sob that cuts right through Fenris, but he makes himself keep watching, and then she is growling again. And again. And again. Until she screams, and he nearly drops her, and Bethany says, “There’s the head. One more. Come on.” 

Hawke finds her control, and Fenris braces her, and down under the water, a small shape floats gracefully into Bethany’s hands. 

Next he knows, he is on his knees behind Hawke, who sits now in the water, carefully, carefully washing their child. The sun is low in the west and the sky, the very air, has gone honey gold. Dimly he feels Bethany put a pair of shears in his hand. He moves around Hawke to cut the cord. Bethany loops a knot of twine about the stump, and presses her ear to the child’s chest to hear her breath and heartbeat. 

The babe opens her eyes, and Hawke gasps--not from pain, but from the clear green gaze that fixes on her. “Oh,” she says. “Hello.” 

Their child turns her head and makes unmistakable rooting motions at Hawke’s breast. She snorts. “Right.” 

Fenris moves back to support her. When the child has her fill, Bethany approaches again. “Do you feel the cramps of the afterbirth yet?” 

“The  _ what _ ?” 

“Did you read a single thing I sent you?” Bethany sighs, not without fondness, and turns to Fenris. “Take your daughter, messere. We’ll get this one cleaned up.” 

Before he can fully process the words, Hawke is passing the babe to him along the surface of the water, letting her float again. He draws a trembling breath. Surely his hands are wrong for this, too rough. He brings her into the crook of his elbow, and tries to lift her slowly, but still she startles and grasps the little finger of his free hand. It sends a pang through him that must show on his face, for Hawke’s expression softens as she looks up at them. 

Carefully, carefully, he walks back to shore, and Zyani brings him a cloth to wrap the child, and he crosses the sand conscious of Isabela following him for a glimpse, and he steps into the basket and lets her and Aoife hoist them up, and he holds his daughter closer against the sway, and carefully, carefully, steps out onto the platform. 

He sits cross-legged with the babe in his lap and looks down at her as she looks up at him and the thatched awning and the mouth of the cave and the stars just appearing in the evening sky, quiet and curious. He is lost in watching the shape of her brow (Hawke’s), the bridge of her nose (his), the black tuft of her hair, the slight taper of her ears, the pink of her cheeks, the green of her eyes. 

They stay that way until her eyes close, and then Fenris would not move for anything, so they stay that way some more until he feels Hawke’s warmth at his back, and he realizes--he did not hear her at all. 

“Look at that,” she sighs. “I finally snuck up on you.”

His smile is broad. “I told you.”

Hawke rests her chin on his shoulder and looks down at what they made. “What was your mother’s name?”

It was… not an easy thing to remember, even when the memories began to return freely. How many times had he heard her called by her given name, and not  _ servos _ ,  _ elf _ , or  _ mother _ ? A handful perhaps, but eventually he did remember, and in the years since, he has held her name and not spoken it aloud. 

He closes his eyes, feeling again the sand withdrawing beneath his feet. A name can be lost, can be stolen, can be returned to someone who no longer wants it, who has lived too long as someone else. 

“Maia,” he says. 

“Maia,” Hawke echoes. He can hear the smile in it, and the reverence too. “A good name.” 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features lots of Tevene. On PC/Mac you can mouseover the phrase for translations. They'll also be in the endnotes. 
> 
> Massive thanks to Nobbie/sirconnie for betaing this chapter and most of this fic as well.

They do their best work at night. 

Mostly, this is a simple matter of playing armed escort, making the rounds to safehouses near the coast and bringing escapees those last few miles to where the  _ Call _ or the  _ Night Wind _ or the  _ Machaeram Magnam  _ will retrieve them. But every so often, there is a genuine bastard who just needs to be put down. 

Amid the cypress trees that border the grounds of the estate, Hawke listens to Fenris’s reconnaissance as she puts a single smear of red kaddis across her mabari’s muzzle. The household guards will be easily identifiable in livery and armor. They are paid, and consequently eligible for death. Anyone else who resists will do so out of obligation and should be gently incapacitated. 

This they have seen before; people in poor clothes with poorer weapons, the tools of their occupation which they have wielded every day, but never once considered turning on their masters. Hawke used to think she would never understand that. It was before she gave any thought to how much she would endure--would willingly submit to--to keep Bethany from suffering. And then Fenris, and now Maia too. But her first and most natural inclination has always been to fight. 

That, of course, is precisely why they’re here. 

Tonight, the guards never have a chance to raise the alarm before they are inside the mansion. To think there was a time when she couldn’t move silently. 

The master’s bedchamber is on the upper floor, central and grand, and guarded. They wait in the shadows beside the staircase. Fenris’s hand finds hers and puts something there, made of fragile clay. Hawke bares her teeth. He knows how much she loves this part. 

She leans out from the shadows just enough to throw overhand. The clay shatters on the landing, spilling an alchemical fog that even magic cannot dispel. The guard cries out, but on balance it’s worth losing the element of surprise, this fear. Hawke and Fenris and the mabari ascend the stairs as the fog rolls down. A bolt from Hawke’s crossbow ends the guard’s efforts to hold the upper floor. 

The bedroom door swings open an instant later and a disheveled mage appears there, staff in hand. Hawke watches his expression change as he takes in the fog, the elf, the woman, and the warhound, and he realizes who has come for him. 

He raises his staff, but Hawke throws one of her knives and interrupts his spell, and in the sliver of time afterward Fenris moves, terribly fast. His markings flash through the fog as he plunges his hand into the mage’s chest. “No more, now,” he says, almost kindly. 

The day shift guards stumble into the foyer, half armored but fully armed, and Hawke turns her aim on them and asks in Tevene if they are paid enough to defend a dead man. After a moment’s consideration, they lay down their blades. 

The first sign of the household is a face peering in from the kitchen. Hawke tilts her head; the cook enters and, without prompting, gathers the fallen swords. Others arrive as the fog clears--gardeners, maids, craftspeople. Children. Families. 

Fenris descends the stairs, the mage’s heart cradled in his right hand like a snifter. “Who is the steward?” An old bent elf presents himself. “Quot servos?” 

“Triginta,” the steward says, and Fenris bids him gather them. 

While they wait, Hawke checks the kitchen. She finds the salt box, empties it into a pouch, and brings it to Fenris. It is finely made, like everything else in this house, carved from olive wood, and just large enough to hold something the size of a fist. Fenris places the heart inside. He does not clean his hand. 

Thirty slaves, four of them children, assemble before them. Thirty grains of sand, in the scheme of things, in the scale of Tevinter. They stand with their heads low. 

“Your master is dead,” Fenris announces. 

The whisper circulates, soft as the fog and heavy as death.  _ Canes venandi_. A few of them sneak glances at the elf, the woman, the warhound, the box, the bloody hand. All this was only a rumor, and one they never dared to hope for. 

“You may go where you will,” he continues. “If you choose to come with us, you will be given shelter. We leave in ten minutes.” 

The household disbands, and Hawke brings the box to the guards. “Who will present this to the Archon?” 

After a sullen silence, the youngest guard lifts a hand. “Id faciam.” 

“Gratias tibi,” Hawke says cheerfully. She passes him the box. He pales a little, but bows to her and takes it out into the night, toward Minrathous. 

One slaver mage is nothing. One household is only a handful of sand. But the sixth heart in as many months, laid at the Archon’s feet? That is a message. 

The water takes one grain at a time until the shoreline changes shape. Eventually the hollow, rotten city will collapse on itself, and with it will fall the Imperium. She would like to live to see it. But if she doesn’t, she will have done this much to correct an ill, when everyone else with the power to do anything about it is too distracted by the end of the world. So. Let the world that ends, or the world that is saved, be better than it was. 

She dismisses the other guards, and follows Fenris to the courtyard. Across the grounds she sees a family of four, and three other figures, headed south on separate paths. Some are slow to trust, and she does not blame them. She spares a thought--if anyone is listening--to wish them speed and freedom. 

The other twenty-three are here, waiting. Bolder now, they meet her and Fenris’s gaze. Some carry their tools. The cook still holds six swords. Fenris looks them over, nods once, and leads the way. Hawke takes the back of the line. 

They pass through field and forest without incident. No one speaks until they reach the  _ Call _ and are well away from Tevinter’s shore. Under the lightening sky, Isabela sits beside Hawke. 

“Somber lot you found this time,” she says, even as one of the children lets out a delighted cry when a gull swoops across the bow. 

“Not everyone copes the way you and I do,” Hawke says. She looks to where Fenris stands speaking with the steward, and wonders how long he was on Seheron, the first time, before the Fog Warriors heard his laughter. 

She’s tired--it hits suddenly, heavily, now that she doesn’t have to be vigilant. She’s hungry too, but Orda, the ship’s cook, stayed behind when they left their bay, and it can wait. They are taking a long route home, circuitous enough to be certain they aren’t followed. Hawke puts her head on Isabela’s shoulder, and Isabela huffs a little laugh, but she doesn’t move. 

When Hawke opens her eyes, the  _ Call _ is anchored in the shallow water, and the sun is just above the cabins that line the edge of the cliffs. Isabela got up at some point and leaned Hawke against the dog. Two children stand over her now, whispering. Hawke still has trouble keeping up with Tevene, but she catches  _ acri _ and  _ tacet_. 

If they were the Surisha girls, she would spring on them, roaring, and carry them over her shoulders until they shrieked with laughter. Perhaps after a year or two, these children will also be able to laugh at such, instead of flinching. 

For now, Hawke slowly opens her eyes and smiles up at their sun-limned silhouettes. One is human; one is an elf. Their wide eyes take in the red across her nose, the shell knives tucked into her belt, the pointed gauntlets. “Esurisne?” she asks them. 

Very solemnly they nod. Hawke gets to her feet, and her mabari does too. “Let’s go see what’s for lunch,” she says, and leads them to where Fenris and Isabela oversee the queue for the boats. “Quid nomen tuum?” The elf is Aemil, and the boy is Calder. “Bona sunt nomina.” She may be imagining it, but they both seem to hold their heads higher. 

Down on the shore, she scarcely makes it three steps before Maia shouts “Mama!” and breaks away from Opel’s grasp to run to her. Hawke goes to one knee in the sand, and a tiny body collides with hers. “Did you bring friends?” 

“So many,” Hawke says into her daughter’s thick black hair. 

Maia leans back and puts her hands on Hawke’s cheeks, her green gaze holding her in place. “Guess. What. The Vashothari. Found.” Hawke opens her mouth to guess, but Maia charges on with, “A  _ whole boar_!” 

Hawke’s stomach growls at the thought. Spit-roasted, with San’s herb blend, and the rum sauce Orda makes, and the salt from the pouch at her hip. A feast for a small victory. “That will probably do for me,” she says, “but what will the others eat?” 

Her daughter’s laugh is the sweetest sound on any shore, on either side of the tattered Veil. “You get what you get!” Maia chants.

Hawke slings her over her shoulder. “And you don’t throw a fit!” 

They go to the water’s edge to wait for the last boat. “Hi!” Maia calls to the new children, who have watched all of this occur beside their equally stunned parents. Then she twists in Hawke’s arms to face the bay. “Papa and Bela!” 

“Hello, Seashell!” Isabela calls as Fenris waves. 

“I dived to the bottom of the bay,” Maia tells her when they beach the boat and climb out. 

Hawke looks to Fenris, who does an admirable job of quenching the alarm that sparks in his eyes. “Who let you do that,” Isabela pouts, “when I wasn’t there to see it?” 

“Zyani was watching me!” Hawke relaxes, marginally. 

Isabela kisses the top of Maia’s head. “Only a few more years until you can be a cabin girl, and learn to do all sorts of dangerous things.” 

“And sell pearls on the side,” says Fenris. He holds out his arms, and Maia throws herself into them. Hawke lets her drag her along, and then they both tuck their faces against Fenris’s neck, where they can feel him chuckle. 

They lead the new liberati to the cookfire. The others make room on crates and driftwood logs. The last of the caves and the first of the cabins have been furnished while the  _ Call _ was away, and in Llomerryn, and just outside Wycome, there are new villages starting. Isabela says the fourth ship in their fleet is nearly ready. The crew are calling it  _ Sanguis Dextra_. 

Hawke passes the pouch of salt to San. The portion of boar she receives in a ceiba shell bowl is small, complemented by fruit so ripe that the rum sauce is put to shame. She thanks San and Orda for their cooking, and Madeen and Rhiss for their hunting. 

Aemil yelps, burning her tongue on the meat. At once Calder reaches over and touches her food, and frost spreads across the surface. Then the boy freezes too, conscious of the eyes on him. His mother clutches his shoulder--ready to bolt, though she knows not where. 

Hawke and Isabela share a smile. San says, “Was it too hot?” and makes a gesture at the fire, which obediently burns lower. Aoife and her elder daughter both chill their food. 

“Mine’s too hot!” says Maia, and she brings Calder her bowl. After a moment, Calder’s mother releases him. 

Hawke glances to Fenris. He lifts the corner of his mouth at her. 

The frost melts quickly under the sun. Hawke sits in the sand with her husband and her daughter, her back against the warm cliff. It has been nearly two years since she last held her wrist out for Fenris to pinch, over a year since the last time he caught her checking the color of his eyes. She has not stopped to wonder if any of this mattered, not since the first boat of liberati reached the sand. 

She is awake, and alive, and home, and sharing a meal with her people--the ones she can keep close, at least--in a place that can never be safe, but it will be free.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quot servos? = How many slaves?
> 
> Triginta = Thirty 
> 
> Canes venandi = Hunting dogs
> 
> Id faciam = I will do it 
> 
> Gratias tibi = My thanks
> 
> acri = sharp
> 
> tacet = silent
> 
> Esurisne? = Are you hungry? 
> 
> Quid nomen tuum? = What are your names? 
> 
> Bona sunt nomina = Good names
> 
> Sanguis Dextra = Red Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers for reading! Tags and possibly rating will update as I go. I'm @hauntedfalcon on Tumblr if you'd like to come yell in my askbox.


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